The Future of Consumerist

Over the last twelve years, Consumerist has been a steadfast proponent and voice on behalf of consumers, from exposing shady practices by secretive cable companies to pushing for action against dodgy payday lenders. Now, we’re joining forces with Consumer Reports, our parent organization, to cultivate the next generation of consumer advocacy.

Stay tuned as Consumerist’s current and future content finds its home as a part of the Consumer Reports brand. In the meantime, you can access existing Consumerist content below, and we encourage you to visit Consumer Reports to read the latest consumer news.

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The Federal Communications Commission will soon begin the long process of trying to roll back the Open Internet Order, the FCC’s barely two-year-old rule that prohibits internet service providers and wireless companies from having any say in what you do or where you go online. Though the Commission’s lone Democrat is unlikely to change the minds of her anti-regulation colleagues, she’s not ready to admit defeat just yet. [More]

As if the saga of Net Neutrality 3.0 weren’t already strange and complicated enough, we can now chalk up another weirdness in the proceeding. Someone who really hates net neutrality has set up a spambot that is sending massive numbers of identical, cloned comments to the FCC’s website, using the identities of people who have no idea their names have been attached to these comments. [More]

Sometimes, the old saw goes, you’ve got to go to war with the resources you actually have, not the ones you might want. So with nothing really left to lose in her battle to preserve net neutrality, the FCC’s lone Democratic commissioner is deploying some scorched-earth Microsoft Word table-making to use FCC Chair Ajit Pai’s own words against him. [More]

With both the Federal Communications Commission and Congress looking to undo relatively recent net neutrality rules that prohibit internet service providers from interfering with what you do online, it was once again time for Last Week Tonight‘s John Oliver to remind viewers of how important these rules are; possibly disrupting the FCC’s public commenting system in the process. [More]

TV host Stephen Colbert recently responded to President Donald Trump’s insulting remarks to CBS reporter John Dickerson with a slew of invective of his own. Now, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai says his Commission is looking into complaints that the Late Show host’s remarks may have violated obscenity regulations. [More]

While the new-look Federal Communications Commission is well on its way to undoing its own, relatively new, net neutrality rules that prevent companies like Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T from determining what you see and do online, lawmakers in the Senate have introduced legislation that would not only roll these rules back but also prevent the FCC from ever trying anything similar. [More]

In a video that would be laughable if it weren’t so terrifying, a senior executive at Verizon repeatedly lies about the FCC’s recently launched efforts to gut its own “net neutrality” rules, about his company’s support of net neutrality, and what these rules actually do. [More]

Net neutrality is a handy name for a pretty simple principle: the idea that the company providing your internet access should deliver you the online content of your choosing, when you choose it, without interfering. And since 2015, it’s been the law of the land. Now we stand to lose it once again — but the arguments that industry and some regulators are making against it are disingenuous at best, and a pack of lies at worst. [More]

New FCC Chair Ajit Pai vowed to kill off net neutrality if he could before he ever got the job, and yesterday he made good on his word, introducing a plan to roll back the reclassification of broadband as a vital piece of infrastructure and remove the FCC’s authority to insist on an internet where companies like Comcast, Verizon, Charter, and AT&T don’t have any say in where you go or what you do online. [More]

Earlier today, FCC Chair Ajit Pai revealed his plan to scuttle existing regulations for internet service providers and replace them with promises from the industry that they won’t do anything bad. It is all in the name of innovation, declared Pai, but the innovator who created the World Wide Web and the very first website, is calling the Chairman out. [More]

You can say this much for new FCC Chair Ajit Pai: He keeps his word. Unfortunately for people who believe that internet service providers should not be allowed to determine what sites you visit, Pai’s key promise has been to kill net neutrality. Today, Pai pulled back the curtain on his plan to undo all recent efforts to regulate broadband. [More]

In much the way that fans of celebrities enjoy chatting about how great two stars would be together, financial analysts daydream about multibillion-dollar corporate weddings. The current pro-business, anti-regulation mindset in D.C. is only fueling those romantic merger fantasies, with one high-profile analyst claiming that now is the perfect time for Comcast to gets its acquisition on. [More]

It was a busy, if confusing, morning for the FCC. The Commission held its monthly open meeting, where it considered more than a half-dozen items, resulting in everything from harmoniously unanimous votes to contentious disputes among the three sitting members. Oh yeah, and Chairman Ajit Pai also got “rickrolled” in person. [More]

Here we are again: Years after the last big net neutrality fight, key players are once more setting down their stakes, drawing their lines in the sand, and every other metaphor for preparing to wage a legalistic battle over the open internet. The latest player to have its say is a trade group representing basically all of the internet’s biggest companies, and it’s begging the FCC to just leave well enough alone already. [More]

While you can now use WiFi to check your email, play games, go online, or watch a movie on a plane, you generally still can’t use it to make a phone call. The FCC is making sure this no-phone refuge remains, by ditching its long-in-the-works plan to lift its ban on in-flight cellphone calls. [More]

The laws, rules, and regulations governing our world aren’t etched into mountains; they can be changed. That’s how we got new rules intended to protect our private information from being used and abused by internet service providers, and how we lost those very same rules just a few short months later. Could the pendulum swing back and restore these privacy guidelines? Not likely. [More]